5 Ways to Secure Your Happyish Ever After

If neglect or abuse is present in your marriage and you are being hurt – get the hell out. If your church tells you to stay, get the hell out of your church. Any decent church will promise you that God loves you more than any institution God made for you – including marriage and including church. If you are telling yourself that you are staying for the kids- tell yourself to leave for the kids so you do not teach them that love is pain. If you have no one to help you get out of an abusive, neglectful, hurtful marriage- start here.

If you are not hurt or neglected, but you’ve “fallen out of love” and so you are disillusioned about marriage- join the club. All the married people in the whole world are in the club. Being disillusioned is good. It means you’ve stopped believing a lie. The lie is that marriage is like it is in the movies and that everyone else is having hot love affairs while you are cleaning up smelly socks and trying to get someone to actually listen to you instead of pretending to listen to you. The truth is that cleaning up socks and trying to get someone to really listen to you IS marriage. It’s less sweep you off your feet and more sweep the kitchen four times a day. Like everything good in life- it’s 98% backbreaking work and 2% moments that make that work worthwhile. So- just get ready to sweat. Despite what the movies tell you- you’ll sweat less often in bed and more often in therapist’s offices, in front of the clothes dryer, and in line at the grocery store while the children lick used gum off the floor and you silently curse your partner for existing. I’m actually surprised more of us married folk are not constantly dehydrated from all the sweating.

Happily Ever After IS NOT A THING. We are all trained by Disney to believe that the wedding is the finish line – but the wedding is JUST ANOTHER STARTING LINE. In light of this fact- we should quit the huge, fancy, debt-inducing weddings. When I asked my parents to help pay for my wedding, they said they’d give me a little bit and then if Craig and I made it to our ten-year anniversary, they’d give us some more to throw a big party. “THAT’s the time to celebrate,” they said. My parents were right.* Celebrate AFTER hard work, not before. Young people: marry simply, start your life, and party later. THINK OF HOW MUCH BABYSITTING FOR YOUR FUTURE COLICKY BABY YOU COULD BUY WITH THAT WEDDING BUDGET.THINK OF HOW MUCH MARRIAGE THERAPY YOU COULD BUY. Invest in your marriage, not your wedding. Spending all your money on a wedding and leaving nothing for marriage is as irresponsible as foregoing health insurance for your baby so that you can throw her a kick-ass birthday party. It’s as backwards as circling the stadium with your arms in the air – waiting for applause before you start the race. Sweat a little, then celebrate. And don’t forget the good news/ bad news –there is no finish line.Marriage starts over again every.single.day.

Sex is really, really freaking confusing. No one talks about this, which is a shame. I’ve been married for eleven years and my husband and I are still trying to figure out how to make sex enjoyable for both of us. Right now sex is a source of all kinds of confusion and resentment and shame and pain for us. But we don’t think this means that there’s anything “wrong” with us or our marriage. We just assume that our confusion means that we’re normal people who’ve been paying attention to the world’s mixed, dangerous sex messages forever and so we have some unlearning to do. When our kids were young – we knew we were stuck when it came to sex – but we couldn’t find an extra hour or dollar to spend figuring it out. Now that the kids are older, we spend hours a week in therapy muddling through this stuff. It’s annoying and painful and expensive and necessary.Mating comes naturally, but healthy sex lives don’t. They take work.

Marriage is still the best chance we have to become evolved, loving people. We live in a transient, disposable world that teaches us that if we are uncomfortable, we should change our surroundings and people instead of ourselves. I do it all the time. New friends, new house, new church, new, new, better, better. It never works, because wherever you go, there you are. If you keep swapping partners because the ass is always greener, you’ll just end up – poorer and more exhausted – but with all the same issues. We are like butterflies who want to keep moving, keep flitting around and be free- but freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose (thank you, Janis). What we want even more than freedom is to be loved, and we can only be loved when we are truly known. It takes a lifetime of tears, laughter, arguments, loss and conversation with another human being to be truly known. We have to be patient. Marriage is dogged, determined patience. It’s also one of the only ways we’ll ever truly know ourselves. Because to know ourselves we have to stop flitting and face our demons in the face of another person who serves as our mirror. Who reflects the best and worst of ourselves back to us. Sometimes I feel like marriage is more a constant relationship with myself than it is with Craig. I’ve learned to quit listing things he could do to be a better partner and ask myself instead what I can do to be a better partner. If I get stuck in comparison induced self-pity and start feeling like others have better love affairs than mine- I don’t need to look for another person to love, I just need to start actively loving the person I already have. Because love is not something to wait for or hope for or look for –it’s something to DO. Do not measure your marriage by how much love you feel today- measure it by how much love you’ve offered today. When you don’t feel love – DO LOVE. Feelings follow doing, not the other way around. Lasting, True Love is not about being swept off your feet. Sometimes love is just sweeping the kitchen and being grateful that there is a kitchen and a partner who is contractually obligated to share it with you forever.

241 Comments

I’m sitting here tonight as I just got the News. The News is something I knew in my darkest place for some time. But still, you solider on. There are children and jobs and health concerns and bills and taxes….everything that always seemed to fall to me. And the best part other than his 15 years younger lover is that when I left he tried to get me back home so I could be with the kids.
I believe everything you wrote about mess and feelings and sadness and despair. I’m thankful for besties who wouldn’t let me drive (sober just shaken) and who love for for who I am. And I do love myself. I just have to believe I deserve better. I know I do, I just need to start making that reality.
I love how you write and what you say. It feels less alone sitting here are 3:09am to know someone made it through this night and the thousands more to come. I hate him and I want to cry at the same time.

I am 4-months post-News and I feel you, sister. Part of me feels stronger that I am now a survivor and a member of a special club of women who endure betrayal beyond our wildest dreams and keep soldering on. And part of me melts into a puddle of tears usually on a daily basis. I hope you are healing. Every woman’s journey through this cruel mess is different, but at our core the pain is the same. You’re not alone.

I went back to Glennon’s post in 2012 when she first revealed her News and I am reading all the posts from that one forward. In my sad moments or my confused moments or my bored moments, her words always make me feel better.

GLENNON!!! You are awesome! I love this! I’ve tried to teach this to my 26 couples I have had the pleasure of preparing for the work that is marriage as well as in my own marriage. Each of these are important things to be aware of and talk about. You frick’n nailed it!

This is the work of a lifetime. It’s hard. It’s epic. And it’s worth it.

G-I love this. So true. Saving it to share with my daughter. I don’t know why once people get married they don’t talk about sex with friends anymore. It’s like this big secret and full of shame for those who struggle in that area. Thanks for being honest.

I also wanted to ask you for those questions you and Craig were taught to ask each other instead of just how was your day? I can’t find them and would love to start using them in my marriage.

All-around great. But … Number 4! I so wish I would have known this at the beginning of my marriage. We spent so many years struggling, not knowing how to talk about sex, and just feeling broken. I love your honesty and openness! It’s amazing how just knowing we aren’t alone can make things better.

Sure wish I had read this 40 yrs ago!! (but that would make you about 75 or so) it would have saved me and others (ex-wives) ALOT of pain and heartache!
It’s never to later to learn and i’m learning everyday thanks to you!
Your the BEST G!!!

I just got married a few months ago and received tons of wedding and marriage advice from every direction. This article is by far the best marriage advice I’ve seen, heard or read. I’ll be sharing it with friends and family who will be taking the plunge soon themselves. Thank you!

I know God brought me to your blog today! I’m in the middle of a heated debate with Him over whether or not to end my almost 12 year marriage. We knew each other a month, found out we were pregnant, broke up, never spoke, and didn’t talk again until I had the baby. We randomly got married two months and she was born and two kids later, I’m wondering why in the hell I kept having kids with a man I barely knew.

I told God at the beginning of last year I wanted to go ‘all in’ with this thing called life. And the entire year was a life-changer in many ways! But it left me with this sinking feeling that something isn’t right with my marriage and never has been. It’s amazing how easy it is to change the course of your life with one decision, and sometimes, it’s a decision you didn’t even give much thought. Scary.

I have all kinds of baggage from my own childhood, which holds me back from really breaking free and asking the hard questions. I keep wanting to blame this on myself–and really it is my fault, my husband is precious–but even blaming me doesn’t take away the realization that I still feel the same way I felt ten years ago. I told my husband the other day if I wake up and feel the same way ten years from now, I’ll probably curl up and die.

We may not have the same issues, but reading your post gave me some sort of peace. Thanks for being real! <3

Thaaank Youu!!!! I’m currently covered in baby puke, the house is trashed, husbands asleep on the floor in one toddlers room and I’m in with the other two. It’s only seven o’clock and this Shiz ain’t purdy! No Disney magic around here, just real life and dam its a [email protected]#&h.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you said about the “huge, fancy, debt-inducing weddings” – I hope you turn the cult of wedding mythology UPSIDE DOWN. My wedding cost less than $1000 (OK, so it was 1980) and I borrowed every visible thing I wore – gown, shoes, veil — and it was beautiful and I could not have been happier. Mostly, I was glad it was over and glad to be married. NO DEBT and that was a pattern that continued for us and prevails to this day. YES the celebration time is down the road, and it does come!! So I appreciate your shouting the truth about this. And so many other things too!